Pentagon studies Vladimir Putin’s body language

The government has spent years studying the body language of Russian President Vladimir Putin and other world leaders, the Pentagon acknowledged Friday, but it said its Putin studies have not informed its decision-making during the Ukraine crisis.

Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby confirmed a USA Today report that a secretive Defense Department think tank has been doing world leader body language analyses for several years at an annual cost of around $300,000, but that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel first learned of the practice when he read about it in the newspaper Friday.

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“The secretary has not read these reports and … I can tell you for sure they have not informed any policy decisions by the Department of Defense,” Kirby said. He emphasized that Hagel does not commission the studies, but that they are part of research done by Andrew Marshall, the seldom-seen, 94-year-old boss of the Office of Net Assessment.

“Mr. Marshall is an out-of-the-box thinker who likes to study all kinds of issues” Kirby said. “Many of them never go beyond his office, and this is one of them.”

The apparent concept is that analyzing foreign leaders’ gestures, movements and nonverbal communication might give additional clues about their intentions. Kirby said he was not sure whether the reports had been shared with the White House or with other government agencies.

The body language studies have their origins with the State Department, Kirby said, and then the Defense Department took them over 2002. The ONA has done two studies on Putin, Kirby said, one in 2008 and another in 2012, as well as studies of former Russian President Dimitri Medvedev.

Kirby said the body language studies are not classified but “we do not release them.” Pressed by reporters, he said he would see if it were possible to release more information about the numbers of world leaders involved and their identities.

Marshall’s ONA, which previously reported directly to the secretary of Defense, has recently been moved in an internal reorganization of the Pentagon’s bureaucracy. Now it reports to the undersecretary of Defense for policy, a vacant post as nominee Christine Wormuth awaits Senate confirmation. Kirby said that ONA’s place in the organizational chart did not limit Hagel’s ability to see what it was doing or keep aware of its research.

Marshall, who has been an influential Pentagon player since the 1970s, has many allies around Washington, including in Congress, some of whom protested Hagel’s reorganization that effectively demoted the ONA. Kirby said that Hagel’s move of the ONA under another office did not amount to a decision to push Marshall and the office away.

The outlook for the body language studies is not clear now that they’ve been brought to Hagel’s attention amid the international standoff over Russia’s incursion into Ukraine. And Kirby was asked if they would continue.

“The secretary was interested in the press coverage of it, he asked some questions about it this morning, and I suspect he’ll be asking more questions about it,” Kirby said.